Randy Jordan runs the Jordan Dairy Farms in Rutland, Massachusetts. Randy has lived on a farm his whole life and has been a working farmer since he got out of college about twenty years ago. He is a dairy farmer so the only crops he grows are corn and hay, as feed for the cows. The hay he grows is conventional hay- just a mixture of grasses- but the corn is "triple-stack" corn, a GMO product.

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"Triple-stack" corn combines "Roundup Ready herbicide tolerance, YieldGard Corn Borer insect protection and YieldGard Rootworm insect protection" (Monsanto). Randy says he like the triple-stack variety because it makes weed control easier and cheaper, prevents insect damage, and also has some drought-resistant qualities. He says that the farm has never had a big insect problem, but that the triple-stack variety is a preventative measure. As well, the GMO corn has increased his yields over the years. When he began farming twenty years ago, there were not any Roundup Ready varieties on the market. He began planting some Roundup Ready corn about fifteen years ago, and has been planting it exclusively for the last ten years. He attributes the increased yields to the better weed control allowed by Roundup Ready corn; weeds use nutrients that could otherwise be used by the corn plants, so fewer weeds means that the corn grows better. This also helps his bottom line on the dairy farm, both because of the increased amount of feed and because the cows like the weedless corn feed better, eat more of it, and produce more milk. Before Roundup Ready corn, there was often a lot of ragweed growing in amongst the corn, which made the feed smell terrible when everything in the corn field, corn and weeds, was chopped up and fermented for feed. In his business, he says, making the cows happy is key.



To fertilize his fields, Randy mainly uses cow manure from the farm. He spreads about 8,000 gallons of manure per acre on his fields, although on fields far from the farm where it is hard to truck manure to he uses liquid nitrogen. Since he grows 500 acres of hay and 450 acres of corn, Randy uses a planter to seed his corn. Sometimes he uses a harrow to break up the ground, but sometimes he plants without doing any tillage work because it saves time and fuel. This past year, his no-till fields did better than the ones he did till because of the drought in Massachusetts; with the soil less opened up in the no-till fields, the moisture didn't escape the soil as easily.



When asked if he ever worries that becasue he plants monocultures of triple-stack he might someday lose an entire crop to a single disease or pest all of the plants are susceptible to, Randy said he's not concerned about it. He said that he tries to stay ahead of pests and diseases that might be coming his way or be blown in by a storm with preventative spraying. As well, his fields are not continuous, so that helps prevent the spread of problems between fields. Even if he lost all of the crops on his road (where the fields are continuous) to a pest, he would only lose about 100 acres. Finally, in the event of a total crop loss, he has as a backup the money he would get from the required crop insurance on his corn. 



For information about the Jordan Dairy Farms, visit the website. 





The information on this page is from an interview with Randy Jordan.